Mason was working most of the day and it was just Toby and I at his private suite in the hotel, which was virtually the entire top floor. He did have an actual house somewhere outside the city that he hardly ever visited, and he gave me the choice of where I felt most comfortable. I didn’t really care, but since he was working so much I figured the suite in town would be better for all of us. And it was nice knowing that there were people fairly close by. All I had to do was hop on the elevator and ride down to where they were.
And when I wanted them to go away and enjoy some quiet time with myself, I could just get back on the elevator and go back up to the suite. It was a fairly charmed life and I hated to say I was somehow getting used to it. I’d never been the type of person who chased money or luxury, and I liked to think that I still wasn’t. I was fine with my meager salary, as long as I got to do what I loved every day. To me that was much more important.
And I thought that someone as rich as Mason had to be super greedy and obsessed with money, but really I saw he was much like me that way. He wanted the freedom to just do what he loved to do with his life; running businesses was that thing for him. And money at this point was really more of a way to keep him on the right path with the business, to tell him if it was succeeding or not. It was like racking up points in a fun, board game.
I went into the kitchen and grabbed some bread, and the peanut butter and jelly. “Toby, I’m making sandwiches. Do you want one?”
“Yes!” Toby called.
I smiled. He barely even looked up from his show.
I made two sandwiches and gave one to Toby, while I sat down at the table to eat mine with a crossword puzzle I’d been working on. I looked at my phone. I wanted to call Marla. I had barely spoken to her since the other night when she’d almost been killed. It wasn’t safe for me to use the phone to contact anyone I knew; there was too much risk that my location might be found out. But I’d sent her a quick email telling her that I was fine and how sorry I was about everything. She’d responded by telling me that she didn’t blame me at all and she was fine. She was taking off to visit some family up north for a while.
I understood her need to get away. I wasn’t sure how I was ever going to face her again. She said she was fine with it and that she was dealing, but how does someone ever really do that with such a horrendous tragedy happening to them. I couldn’t imagine how scared she was. But Marla was tough; I knew she was a fighter. In fact, I was almost more worried about how she might run off at the mouth and get herself killed before I showed up to make the deal with the Scarluccis. Marla was a feisty, fiery woman. She was the life of the party, and one of the sweetest, most outgoing women you would ever meet, but she was also the type of woman who would dent your rear end if you really were asking for it.
And I’d almost gone to try to help her and gotten myself killed. I knew it then that it was a suicide mission for me. There would probably be no exchange; they would have killed us both. But I felt responsible. I had to do something. I couldn’t let her pay for my mistakes, not alone at least. I was going to be there to tell her in person that I was sorry, even if those were the last moments of either of our lives.
After finishing a crossword and eating most of my sandwich, I decided to put on a pot of coffee. I was starting to feel a bit of the midday crash pulling at me. I must have been getting old. I didn’t used to feel such a lagging dip in my energy during the middle of the day, but lately it seemed I needed a nap right along with the kids.
Speaking of which, Toby was now conked out in front of his television show, his half eaten sandwich beside him on the small plate lying on the floor.
I prepared the coffee maker and set it. A moment later I heard the familiar sounds of coffee brewing. Soon the sweet aroma would be filling the air.
While the coffee was being made I decided to take a moment to go out onto the deck overlooking everything. It was a breathtaking sight and it almost made me feel a little dizzy if I looked over the edge just the wrong way, but for the most part I couldn’t get enough of seeing the picturesque skyline of Vegas, and the desert that lay beyond it. I’d always been fascinated with the desert. There was just so much beauty in it. Landscapes in general had always appealed to me. It was probably the reason I used to paint them so much. I wanted to get back into painting. It used to calm me down so much. It was like a meditative exercise where I got to work out all of my issues with the world around me and how I fit in, and how I dealt with the pressure of all that.